1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of the devices for disinfesting town and country environments from mice, rats and other noxious animals.
The serious damage caused by mice and rats in many parts of the world both in the economic and sanitary fields and the continuous necessity of eliminating such worldwide plague are universally known.
This invention is the fruit of ten-years studies, researches and tests about the various, exceptional behaviours particularly of rats in their environment in order to continuously capturing such noxious animals in fast succession, while being compatible with the presence of children and domestic animals.
2. Description of the Related Art
Different kinds of traps such as snares, maze traps, poison-baited traps, and still other traps are presently used for the disinfestation from mice and rats. Such kinds of traps, however, have the drawback not to allow noxious animals to be continuously captured after one another in addition to being often dangerous to other animals and people. Moreover, the use of poison causes environmental problems especially in food stores and granaries where there are also safety problems for people.
A first solution to such problems has been already given by the same Applicant of the present invention with the device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,305,545 which is embodied in the present description and essentially is based upon preventing the captured animals from emitting olfactory danger signals, for example biological alarm secretions, which could be sniffed by other animals which would escape the danger to be captured. As a result of that the capture of such animals can be repeated indefinitely. The device includes a jointed construction essentially consisting of an upper part comprising an entrance and a decoy and capture assembly, and a lower part for receiving the captured animals. The two parts are detachable from each other and connected by a sealing joint so as to communicate through a sealed discharge flap which opens downwardly into the lower part. In this embodiment, the captured animals reach said discharge flap through a fall room just below the capture assembly which is formed of four rotary, rectangular, continuously operating trapdoors which are placed at 90.degree. to each other and are rotated on one common carrying axle by an electromechanical device actuated in turn by optical or pressure sensing means. The movement of the discharge flap is synchronized with the rotation of the trapdoors.
The above-described device showed a good efficiency in all of the experimented applications, particularly as far as the possibility for the capture to be repeated indefinitely is concerned. Nevertheless some problems have been found such as to limit the use of said embodiment. In particular, the decoy capability as well as the capability of completely overcoming the mistrust of the most cautious exemplars are not quite satisfactory. A further problem consists in the difficulty of removing and transporting the captured animals, a really unpleasant and not hygienic operation.